LEBANON — Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the same goes for Redeemer Lutheran Church of Lebanon, which welcomed the public to its new and improved house of worship on Sunday.

Visitors to the open house were greeted by enthusiastic church members who led tours explaining how the process began, and the end result.

“We realized that the building was showing its age and needed improvement,” Pastor Scott Schuett said. “It was going to be costly to maintain the church and make it better, and it just made sense to blend old with new. We would get much more out if it.”

Starting five years ago, the project was broken into two phases: the construction of a new fellowship hall on two acres, and lifting the 64-ton sanctuary to a connecting narthex, or entrance area. The second phase concluded on Aug. 22.

Sunday school teacher Galye Solari has been with the church for 22 years and said now that the project is finished, the church is “completely whole again.”

The former location, directly across the road, was a mere 850 square feet and had only one bathroom, which was located in the basement. It could hold only 80 people, and that “was pushing it” Schuett said. Today, about 160 people can fit in the sanctuary alone, and the building includes a spacious dining area, handicapped-accessible amenities and a kitchen.

As guests sipped coffee and ate cookies and slivers of cake, they could also see the project from beginning to end via pictures displayed on a projector screen. The photographs showed the labor of restoration and building that was done by church volunteers with some help from professionals.

“The volunteers putting their own work into this has made it a wonderful experience,” said Douglas Rosen, president and architect of Rosen Associates. “When you work on something yourself, it’s an immense benefit. It has ownership.”

Paula McManus, of Columbia, said that she watched the whole process and had been told of the sanctuary’s beauty in its detailed woodwork, but she had to come see for herself.

“I saw this old truck pick this structure up and move it,” McManus said. “I wondered is it going to make it, because they can’t reproduce that (woodwork). The outcome is remarkable.”

Founded in 1916, the church has seen its fair share of transitions. After a modest beginning at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Willimantic, it put down long-term roots when it procured Village Hill School for $100 in 1938. The congregation had to split up into two separate services and take their children to the nursery school, Red Sneakers, for Sunday school.